On Food and Cooking

roasting, so it’s best to sear the roast
immediately, and then continue at a lower
temperature to finish the insides.
Liebig’s ideas caught on very quickly
among cooks and cookbook writers,
including the eminent French chef Auguste
Escoffier. But simple experiments in the
1930s showed that Liebig was wrong. The
crust that forms around the surface of the
meat is not waterproof, as any cook has
experienced: the continuing sizzle of meat
in the pan or oven or on the grill is the
sound of moisture continually escaping and
vaporizing. In fact, moisture loss is
proportional to meat temperature, so the
high heat of searing actually dries out the
meat surface more than moderate heat
does. But searing does flavor the meat
surface with products of the browning
reactions (p. 777), and flavor gets our
juices flowing. Liebig and his followers
were wrong about meat juices, but they